A General Sketch of the European War eBook

The southern, or second, army, which stretched all
along the Galician plain at the foot of the Carpathians
to the town of Halicz, had for its mission the protection
of the first army from the south. It was known,
or expected, that the first army would advance right
into Russian Poland, with but inferior forces in front
of it. It was feared, however, that the main
Russian concentration to the south-east of it might
turn its right flank. The business of the second
army was to prevent this. The first army (I),
being the operative body, was more homogeneous in
race, more picked in material than the second (II),
the latter containing many elements from the southern
parts of the empire, including perhaps not a few disaffected
contingents, such as certain regiments of Italian
origin from the Adriatic border.

So far as we can judge, perhaps—­and it
is a very rough estimate—­we may put the
whole body which Austria-Hungary was thus moving in
the first phase of the war beyond the Carpathians
at more than 750,000, but less than 1,000,000 men.
Call the mass 800,000, and one would not be far wrong.
Of this mass quite a quarter lay in reserve near the
mountains behind the first army. The remaining
three-quarters, or 600,000 men, were fairly evenly
divided between the two groups of the first and of
the second army—­the first, or northern,
one being under the command of Dankl, the second under
that of von Auffenberg. Each of these forces
was based upon one group of depots of particular importance,
the northern operative army (I) relying upon Przemysl,
and the southern one (II) upon Lemberg.

It was less than a week after the first German advance
bodies had taken the outer forts of Liege when Dankl
crossed the frontier, heading, with his centre, towards
Krosnik and farther towards Lublin. His troops
were in Russian territory upon the Monday evening or
the Tuesday, 10th-11th August.

The second army meanwhile stood fulfilling its role
of awaiting and containing any Russians that might
strike in upon the south. It had advanced no
more than watching bodies towards the frontier, such
as the 35th Regiment of the Austrian Landwehr, which
occupied Sokal, and smaller units cordonned out southward
between that town and Brody. Here, at the outset
of the large operations that were to follow, it is
important for the reader to note that everything depended
upon the resisting power of the second, or southern,
army.

Observe the problem. Two men, a left-hand man
and a right-hand man, go out to engage two other men
whom they hope and believe to be unready. The
left-hand man is particularly confident of being able
to drive back his opponent, but he knows that sooner
or later upon his right the second enemy, a stronger
man, may come in and disturb his action. He says
therefore to his right-hand companion: “Stand
firm and engage and contain the energy of your opponent
until I have finished with mine. When I have
done that, I shall turn round towards you, and between
us we will finish the second man.”